Little Child
by Ms Starlight
Summary: Not everything about Manticore was evil


Rating: PG

Disclaimer: I don't own DA, nor do I own "When the Children Cry" by White Lion

A/N: I'm not big on song fics...I don't particularly like them. So, why am I writing one? Well, I was sitting around about two weeks ago listening to this song (which I have always loved) and this whole idea sprang into my head. I couldn't get it out...so I decided to write it. I wrote this about a week and a half ago...didn't decide to actually post it until I saw the DA ep. tonight.

A/N #2: Attempting first person again...we'll see if I can get through it this time.

Little Child...

I can still remember my university days. So young, and with so much in front of me, I didn't really care what it took to get what I wanted. The smell of a science lab can still to do that to me. I used to just stand in the middle of the white, tiled floor with my white lab coat hanging at my knees and smile. The chemicals, the instruments, the endless possibilities...they have a way of making a person feel somewhat godly.

Certainly, however, I never imagined science would bring me to Wyoming. Growing up in Boston I was surrounded by people and buildings. This place though is filled with nothingness. Looking across the vast, endless plains leaves me feeling very much alone. Sure, the night sky -- unhindered by street lights -- is brilliantly bright and occasionally filled with the majestic beauty of the auroras, but even the hundreds of stars make me feel out of my element.

Only the lab puts me at home here.

Now, even that has been tragically defiled. My years at Yale never prepared me for this.

So, every once in a while I take a look around me, and I wonder how I ended up in this place. The snowcapped mountains in the distant west give no indication of the impurity running through this vast, grassy plain. In the winter when it snows and damp, pristine powder covers the ground and hangs heavily in the trees, it's hard to remember what I am here to do.

When I came here so many years ago, young and naive, I thought I was going to save the world. I suppose that reaching perfection is always much more appealing to young eyes. Now, however, I look at this place, at my work, and I shudder. These children, still fresh faced infants, have no idea what is ahead of them. I wonder if they will know of me, and if they will hate me for what I've had to do.

They were supposed to be our salvation -- _my_ salvation. Now, that has been taken from the both of us. Even the heady scent of the science lab I'm standing in can't hide from me the robbery that has taken place.

I peer down at the bundle in my arms. She is my project, my creation. I am as much her mother as the woman who carried her, perhaps even more so. Her wide, brown eyes look up at me, shimming from tears shed during the long hours she must spend in her army issue cradle. Those tears break my heart, and I wipe them away with my white lab coat.

Little child,

Dry your crying eyes.

The other doctors have told me not to get attached. It wasn't long after this project began that I noticed they were different from me. These people weren't seeking change, but fame. I followed them though, blinded by my own idealism. The child in my arms, the very structure of her body and mind being my own lovingly crafted work of art, waves a small hand at me.

My mistake lands on her. She'll be the one who will have to deal with my blindness. If I hadn't accepted this job, or at least had looked into it more before running across the continent with a biology book in one hand and an electrophoresis machine in the other, then this innocent child would have never been brought into this hell.

How can I explain the fear you feel inside?

Cuz you were born into this evil world

Where man is killing man,

But no one knows just why

I'll be gone before I can tell her why I've chosen this path. I can never explain to her the reasons why I brought her into a broken world. Her fingers gripping my hand are strong because I made them that way. I wanted her to have endurance and beauty...to be able to raise the human race into a new era. She was to be the model of perfection, a leader people could follow toward morality and salvation.

Now, I look around this lab at the other doctors, and I can see the error of my ways. My hope for the future could very well be a poison. This project isn't about forging a kinder, gentler world. Rather, this project is about creating a means toward further violence and destruction.

When I first got a letter from the government asking me to join with their new, experimental project, I was too excited to question the rough description they gave me. It wasn't called Manticore then, the name came along much later. Back then, it was simply called Project 17320. Fresh off of getting my doctorate, I was eager to jump into a career, and a genetic engineering project under government grants seemed like the perfect opportunity.

It seemed harmless, even a bit hopeful. Many of the doctors came here under the misconception that Project 17320 was innocent research. In the past few years though, they've either moved on or changed. They've hardened, and none of them seem to notice that the children we have created are more than a collection of the four base pairs we've all become so familiar with.

What have we become?

Just look what we have done.

All that we destroyed,

You must build again.

I suppose that in a way, there is still hope. These children are babies yet. The government wants to turn them into soldiers, but perhaps they will be strong enough to rise up against all that. I hope my darling little baby will become the angel I thought at first that she would be. Desperately, I search her eyes for the soul which is rapidly cultivating inside her fragile body.

If only she knew.

When the children cry,

Let them know we tried.

She _will_ be a leader, and she will be strong. Will she know how to use those strengths I programmed into her? Will she be able to resist the propaganda these men will feed her? Perhaps I didn't make her strong enough, or maybe I made her too strong. The entire process in all it's clinical coldness runs through my mind. It never seemed so detached when I was creating her; but, then it had been a labor of love. I can never really have children, my infertility having been a source of much depression in my life, and Manticore gave me the only way I could find to really be a mother.

I suddenly became Eve -- able to create a new, better world.

My dream cannot possibly be so dead.

Cuz when the children sing,

Then the new world begins.

The tiny infant hides her face in the folds of my coat as I walk with her past the other doctors. They're running tests on their babies, already recording the infants levels of strength and endurance. The process of turning them into soldiers has already begun.

Not my baby...not my little love. I forge the mandatory tests that all Manticore doctors are required to run. Even her blood tests I alter. Perhaps a late start on this little one will make her different. Maybe she will be able to help the others.

Little child,

You must show the way

To a better day

For all the young.

They'll all be twisted into monsters. I can almost imagine them, all these beautiful children. Experiments were done with babies in Nazi Germany, I still remember reading about them in my research. I suppose I never really grasped what that meant until now. Before I could never fathom the idea of infecting a child with a disease to learn how to treat it. The earlier projects, X-3 and so on, have almost all failed. X-5 is hoped to be more successful. I certainly hope so. Spending most of my time in the nursery, I don't get to see the tests they run on the others, but I hear about them. Breaking their bones and trying to repair them...exposing them to carcinogens and different kinds of poisons to see how the body reacts.

This child, my child, will have all I can give her until I am gone. I won't deny her my love, not when she potentially has such horrors to face. She will be on her own not long from now, but I desperately need her to understand -- even if only on an unconscious level -- that she was not spawned from evil.

Cuz you were born

For the world to see

That we all can live

With love and peace.

This world needs someone like her. All the mindless butchering and fighting could stop, if only she is allowed to blossom into the heavenly gift I meant for her to be. If Manticore is any indication of the level which humanity has fallen to -- which I highly suspect that it is -- than the Utopia I envision is probably impossible.

Nevertheless, when I look in her eyes and see into their deep, chocolate depths, I still see Eden waiting only a few steps away.

No more presidents,

And all the wars will end.

One united world,

Under a God.

Maybe it's naive of me to think that she can change the world. There can't be any good without evil, but that doesn't mean that evil has to be allowed to prosper. I've always thought that if people would just open their eyes and really see what they were doing, things would change. How she could possibly accomplish this, I have no idea, but it's nice to have something to hold onto.

Gripping her tightly to my chest, I start slowly out of the nursery. Her brothers and sisters glance up at me as I pass, their eyes as empty as ones forged from glass. They look like lifeless dolls, unblinking and still.

When the children cry,

Let them knew we tried.

Cuz when the children sing,

Then the new world begins.

In my desperation to find my dream, I've found myself in this den of evil. They'll do away with me soon, I've seen the way the other doctors look at me. They know my goal is different from theirs. They've seen me holding this child, humming and singing to her. Sometimes, at night, I sneak into the nursery and take her from her crib to sleep in the comfort of my room. No one answers her cries in the nursery. Already the children are being taught to fend for themselves.

I can hear the other babies crying out when I walk in, but I can't help them. They're not mine...and I feel somewhat obligated to my child. I have to somehow rectify my mistake, repent my sin.

What have we become?

Just look what we have done.

All that we destroyed,

You must build again.

I walk with her to my room. The other doctors give me nasty looks, but I don't care. They know, there's no use hiding now. As long as none of them have the guts to stop me, I will continue to love this child.

Sometimes during the night I lay with her beside me, and I cry with her. We both face the same thing in a way. She looks toward a world that will not welcome her kindly, and I look toward death. I have already outlived my dream to see it crushed beneath the feet of selfishness. For the past few months I've noticed a change in the way the government officials above me look at me. They used to carefully stay out of my way, now I find them peering over my shoulder.

They know what I'm doing, are very aware of the fact that I'm no longer working on their project, but rather my own.

No more presidents,

And all the wars will end,

One united world,

Under a God.

She cuddles up toward me, her delicate lungs dragging in breath. She truly is beautiful, her long lashes resting against her cheeks. I plant a kiss on top of her downy head and close my eyes. My room is blissfully quiet and less lonely with her inside of it. Outside the snow is falling gently toward the ground. It hangs heavy in the tree outside my window which creaks and groans with the added weight. The sound keeps me up at night, and just that morning I'd taken a broom to the branches. Already the early snow settling heavily on the unshed leaves have arched the lowest braches down far enough to touch the ground.

The cottonwood looks suspiciously like a weeping willow.

When the children cry,

Let them know we tried.

As I set her down on my bed I can hear footsteps outside, but I ignore them. She will not see fear on my face. The soldiers outside won't see fear either, that's what they want to see and I'm not going to give that to them. I'm jeopardizing their project, have been ever since I looked into the eyes of this child, and now they have to do something about it. I knew they would eventually.

It's strange that a woman like me would have such strong maternal instincts.

They're grouping up outside of my door. I lean down, resting my elbows on either side of the little child, and press kisses to her cheeks. A few stray tears fall from the tips of my lashes to run down her face. It almost looks like she's crying as well, but her eyes and dry and softly closed in a blissful sleep.

She won't be so innocent one day, and I'm not naive enough to think that she won't be a fighter. She's got a body made for war, and surely she won't be able to avoid violence forever...especially here.

Cuz when the children fight,

_Let them know it ain't right._

When the children pray,

Let them know the way,

One of the men outside cocks his gun. It's a cold sound, one of finality. However, the sound of the door buckling inward under the power of the thighs and boots is lost on me. The wood cracks, and slams into the wall. The baby wakes with a frightened cry as they rush toward me.

Her lungs fill and emit a long, shrill cry. Her hands with her short, slightly fat fingers reach for my hand. I let her hold my finger as the world around me slows down, almost to a halt. Everything is creeping along, the men rushing toward me at less than half the speed they should be. I can see her blink...once...twice.

She is so innocent, she has no idea what's happening.

Everything suddenly rushes in around me as the spell is broken. My hand is jerked violently from hers and I'm thrown forcefully out into the snow. The land around me tilts sickeningly from side to side for a moment before stabilizing.

Inside, I can hear her shrill cries. In a way, I suppose her tears are a good thing. They make her human, and so much different from the others. She cries, she hurts, and she can never rid herself of the heart she has grown.

The man who walks up to me, his boots crunching crisply in the snow doesn't know what I do, he is blinded by his own objective. Perhaps I am as well, I'll never know for sure. For now, it will do for me to believe that my dear, little child will grow with the grace she was intended to.

He presses a gun to the side of my head; I can still hear her cries echoing off the snow, filling the night. His finger tightens around the trigger, and I don't care.

Cuz when the children sing,

Then the new world begins.


End file.
